1. Field
The present invention relates to the monitoring of hand hygiene.
2. Background
There are numerous situations where hand washing or otherwise cleansing is particularly important, such as in hospitals, food preparation areas and public toilets. Statistics show that people in general do not wash their hands as often as needed for infection control. Therefore it would be useful to be able to monitor the observance of hand washing requirements. However in the situations where this is likely to be most useful personal privacy is particularly important. Therefore it is preferable that any monitoring should be done in a non-intrusive way.
The frequency of hand washing or cleansing by groups of people can be estimated from the amounts of soap used. This data does not correlate activities that require the hands to be washed with the amount of soap used.